Last year I spent some time reading the powerful book The Night of the Confessor by  the Czech Roman Catholic priest Tomas Halik. His readings of the Gospel in light of the Church today moved me to write four blog posts at Bible Junkies. I reproduce one of those posts here,Church as “Community of the Shaken:” Tomas Halik and the Lost Sheep,  with links to the other three at the end of the entry.

I have been reading for the past two weeks a book by Tomas Halik, a Czech Catholic priest and theologian, called Night of the Confessor.  I want to excerpt some passages from the book over the next few weeks, especially those dealing more directly with biblical themes, as this book is a challenge to Christianity as it is lived today, for those who are Christians and those who are not. At this point, I am not that interested in coming to any conclusions regarding Halik’s work or his problems, but just giving a section of his work and asking some questions. I have found the book powerful, moving and, in the best possible sense, a shake-up. I also find that somehow, as the best spiritual writers tend to be able to do, he speaks directly to me.

Soren Kierkegaard, whom I regard as the first real prophet of the new path of faith – of faith as the courage to live in paradox – used to stress that in faith people stand before God as individuals. In his own loneliness, Kierkegaard experienced the paradox of which Jesus spoke: God is like the shepherd who left behind ninety-nine sheep and went off in search of “the one that was lost.” Maybe today also God will tend to go after the “lost sheep,” talk to their hearts, and carry them on His shoulders, accomplishing something out of their experience of “being lost and found again” that he could not achieve with the ninety-nine percent that never wandered, that is, those people who believe themselves to be in good health and therefore have no real need of Him – the doctor.

Yes, “the Church is a community,” “christianity is not a private enterprise,” and so on. We are all familiar with the rhetoric of the Church, and in a sense it is true, of course. However, I am increasingly convinced that the future face of the Church – a church that will fulfill the promises that “the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it” – will be more of a “community of the shaken” than the sharing en masse of an unproblematized tradition that is accepted as a matter of course” (Chapter 16: Second-Wind Christianity, Kindle Edition, 83%)

I have never really thought of how the “lost sheep” come back to the sheepfold and how they might change the sheepfold, transform it, and not just be transformed. Are we ready to be transformed by the “lost sheep”? Are we ready to let them do their work? What can their experience teach us, the 99% who think all is well? Are we willing to see ourselves as lost (if indeed we are) and not a part of the 99%?

What does it mean to be a “community of the shaken”? How does Halik see this community transforming the Church as it is and what does he mean by the Church being more than “sharing en masse of an unproblematized tradition that is accepted as a matter of course”?

See the other entries here:

The End of the Church as We Know It? Tomas Halik and “The Confessor’s Night”

A Little Faith: Tomas Halik and the Mustard Seed

Tomas Halik and the “Kingdom of the Impossible”

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John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.